Catch Me If You Can
by Lilacnightmares
Summary: Bede was supposed to be the one that Gloria was chasing after to beat. Instead, it was the other way around to those who could see it. Bede was chasing after Gloria and it felt like the gap between them was growing further and further away from his reach the more time that passed.


Bede had always been the one to walk in front as a Pokémon Trainer.

That person that seemed as though they were going to make it to the top without any single challenge. It was the one thing that made him feel as though he reigned supreme, the one thing that gave him a sense of control and respect when he could receive it in no other places, and the one thing that made him feel like he had a reason to keep on going in life. He worked hard to become that kind of person. He spent years learning, practicing, honing his skills in everything that he could get his hands on for the sake of making Chairman Rose proud. It's all that he's known ever since the man thought enough of an orphan to take him into his home and give him his first Pokémon.

Bede wanted to prove that he was worthy of that decision.

For a while, he thought that he had been doing just that. He graduated from the Trainer's School with high marks, he set out to capture more Pokémon and prepare himself for the Gym Challenge, and the instant that he finally got his very own letter of recommendation—

The Champion of Galar, Leon, gives out two letters of recommendation for the first time ever in his career. Unsurprisingly, the first one is given to his kid brother, Hop, and the second one is more of a surprise since it's given to a no one person, it's given to a friend of Hop, Gloria.

Well, that's a fine mess of things, he thought.

At first, Bede paid the whispers of their names no mind. Nobody could be as good as someone that the Chairman endorsed, he was the reason that they had a league in the first place, some pity letters from the Champion didn't mean anything that would affect him.

They could come out to the pitch, but they would be kicked away just like the rest of the challengers who thought they were hot stuff.

It would be much to Bede's own surprise when he encountered that no name girl in the Galar mines, he had been checking the readings for Wishing Stars and there seemed to be a decent chunk of them hidden somewhere in the ground. He had been on the brink of finding some but that girl wandered into the chamber he was in.

He cocked his head to the side at the sound of feet shuffling against the dirt growing closer, and there she was a girl in a gaudy sweater that looked like it was knit with Wooloo cotton and a garish rutsack that looked like it had seen better years.

She was every inch a girl with hand-me-downs that looked like she was playing dress-up.

"You'll regret getting in my way," he said, flatly.

"Bring it on," she replied.

Bede was nice enough to give her a warning and that she should move along before somebody makes her cry. She disregarded that entirely and took him on in battle. She nearly squashed his entire team flat in a couple of moves and it made him feel so peeved.

Nobody had ever beaten him before in his life!

He might have accepted this loss if it had been from someone with a name and somebody with a history. But this was somebody who came from the middle of nowhere, only recently starting a career in the Gym Challenge, and she had no background in this whatsoever!

Somebody like this had bested him?

Really?

It had to have been some kind of fluke.

"Somebody like you just got lucky," he reasoned the thought. "I've got a world of responsibilities from the Chairman and you have time to rest where I'm always working. You can try, but you won't win next time around. Try and catch me if you can, girl, but you won't ever do it."

Bede did his best to play it off, and he tried to push ahead to focus on the things that really mattered, gathering the Wishing Stars and beating more Gym Leaders so that he may get to the finals.

The keyword was: he tried.

He tried to ignore the festering anger underneath his skin having been beaten by somebody like Gloria, but the thing was, how could somebody ignore something if it kept happening over and over again? Every time that Bede would run into Gloria, they would inevitably have a battle and each and every single time—

Gloria beat him.

Her team of Pokémon wiped him out faster, quicker, and without warning.

It didn't seem to matter what he did, or how he changed his strategy, he lost. He would have the last word every time no matter what, but it didn't feel like his excuses for why it would dare happen in the first place were even slightly working at convincing her.

Gloria never once held it against him.

Sure, there were times when she would taunt him or tease him during a battle but it was never about his strength or confidence. No, she seemed to understand that that was a touchy subject so she avoided it. It was always about his coat or his curly hair.

Of course, that didn't make him feel any better.

The way she laughed and smiled after a battle, the way that she thanked him for the fight, the way that she playfully teased him as if they were friends and not the heated rivals they were supposed to be, and the way that her heart tried to shine through the cracks in his facade.

Bede was supposed to be the one that Gloria was chasing after to beat.

Instead, it was the other way around to those who could see it. Bede was chasing after Gloria and it felt like the gap between their strength was growing further and further away from his reach the more time that passed. He wasn't going to allow her to catch up with him for a moment. He could not allow anyone to do that. No way was somebody going to stand on the same level as him, no way was somebody going to see his weakness, no way was anyone on this planet going to show the person that he had tried so hard to erase.

He refused to believe it.

She was the one hot on his heels.

She was the one looking at him.

Not the other way around!

This bait and switch became a game that they played. Gloria and Bede would constantly be pushing at the other's buttons, and it would keep spinning and spinning like a Spinda doing its teeter dance. They revolved around one another in a game of catch and release, chase and chase again, and certainly, it became a part of life.

No matter how much they did or didn't realize it.

Bede tried to do everything humanly possible and in his book of tricks to keep her from catching up to him. He ran on ahead and fought tooth and nail, he simply searched high and low for the Wishing Stones that were expected from him, and he kept fighting the Gym Leaders until he had gotten close to earning his fourth victory. Gloria and Hop were alongside that path, and he couldn't avoid them. He would win every time he faced Hop, and while that would momentarily fix the feelings he had, Gloria would come from behind and burn him once again. It mattered not if he won against that pitiful boy if he could not best Gloria, what good was he?

Where was that powerful boy that had been chosen by the Chairman years ago to become the next Champion?

If he was weak, how could he be the infamous Bede who could seemingly do anything?

What was the world going to do if they realized that the boy he had tried so desperately to hide all those years ago was still inside of him?

Bede…

Bede was supposed to be the next Champion of Galor who had risen from nothing to take everything.

If he wasn't that Bede…

Who was he if he was not that person?

He was starting to slip up, and he knew it. His moves got sloppier and his technique was questionable at best. Nobody noticed but he knew that he was screwing up. He just didn't have the power to stop himself now, he was far too deep into this water he had waded into to turn back now. The entire time he was stewing in his self-loathing and feelings of severe inadequacy, and it was in those poor feelings that he was allowed to be twisted up by Oleana. She convinced him that he had to do everything, everything, to get those stones, and it didn't matter what the cost was.

So, he did something about it.

Because he did what he did and he had no remorse at the time because he had no other way to think, the Chairman publicly denounced him in front of everyone, cast him aside like yesterday's rubbish, and removed him from the Gym Challenge in one afternoon as if it was so easy to do.

It nearly broke him.

He says nearly because of course, of course not even a few days later as he wandered the streets of Hammerlocke, Gloria appeared in front of him with that same smile she always had. It was somber, though, this time around. She reached out to him with such gentleness that he had never seen, such that the only way he knew how to react was to try and push her away.

He sneered, "Come to gloat now that I've been ousted?"

"I don't know what you think I would do something so cruel," She stared at him, a bit nerved. "I have no reason to do that to you. Sure, you've been a jerk to Hop, but that doesn't mean it justifies doing something like that. " She glanced up at the stadium behind him and then looked back at him to explain.

Tch.

She had already given him an earful for that time and time again.

Gloria shook her head. "We actually made a huge discovery because of your actions that we would have never known if it wasn't for what you did, Wooloo head. More about the legends of the past that could be the key to understanding more about Gigantamaxing."

He had no idea what she was talking about. She was trying to comfort him, but he really didn't want the pity of others. Bede would have preferred if she just left him be, but Gloria never ever did what he wanted. She kept right at the cusp of his heels with every step he took.

"Nonsense," he deflected. "If that was the case then the Chairman would have already reinstated me into the challenge. Don't think that I'm not going to speak with him myself personally about being allowed back in."

"Bede…" she frowned. "I'm worried about you. I know you were just following orders but don't you think there's something wrong since you got in trouble for doing that? It's okay to be upset… but something is fishy about this."

Bede looked away from her. Oleana had told him that it was what the Chairman would have wanted him to do, but when he saw the annoyance in the man's eyes, he knew that that woman had thrown him under the bus. He knew in his gut that something was wrong, but his feelings told him that it was just his fault.

He knew this.

He just hated that Gloria was pointing it out to him like this. His chest was hot, and it felt like he was going to lose it. Nobody had ever made him feel like he was going to lose his cool, nor had they ever made him feel like he was going to burst into wet tears.

Gloria reminded him of his weakness.

"...It's none of your business, you got that?" he said. His tone was as sharp and blunt as he could muster at that moment.

"Aren't you wasting the time that you could be using training or getting to your next challenge you'll conquer by talking to somebody like me?! Honestly, you have no time to spend lounging about when you could be winning! Wasting your time here in Hammerlocke… ugh. Unbelievable, if you're really the person that beat somebody like me then you should be using your time wisely, not stupidly."

She flinched, but yet, did not move from where she stood.

"Bede…" Gloria began to say. Her footsteps against the pavement were the only noise that resonated in his ears.

She was close to catching him.

This close to reaching him.

He couldn't let that happen. No, no, no… he could never let anyone get close to him like that. He was only going to lose them just like he had lost everyone else in his life.

That was when Opal made her appearance and gave him a proposition that he dared not refuse. This woman gave him a way to get away from Gloria before she could touch him, and gave him the sense that he could get back to where he was and return his strength to what it needed to be to beat everyone.

The notion that he could get what he had just lost was everything at that moment.

It was safe when he was alone. He knew what to expect and he knew that he could get by. Whatever he had been feeling was better squashed before it overflowed and overtook him. Yet, as he and Opal walked away from Hammerlocke, he could still feel Gloria's eyes on his back.

Spending his time amongst Fairy-Types and dealing with the quizzes and challenges that Opal insisted that he had to go through to become her next pupil. That's what lay ahead of him. It wasn't hard, but it was a lot of work that required so much of his focus.

He was no stranger to hard work, however, so he took to it as he took it anything else.

Bede continued to feel her presence as he spent weeks training in Ballonlea with Opal and her Fairy trainers. It was an itch that couldn't be scratched no matter how you rubbed at it.

He thought about Gloria when he stopped to breathe in between battles, he thought about how she was doing out there and who she was beating with ease, and although he should have known better than to do it, he sat back and watched her matches when they came on the television.

She fought with determination and tact. He could not dispute that she had become somewhat of a formidable rival. He just wished that he could be there battling her instead of where he was.

There was just something about her that while it irked him, it was something that he missed. He didn't realize it but he had really grown fond of having her around every now and again. It wasn't something that he would admit, though. He would ball that up and refuse it if Opal pointed it out.

For once, the space between them was something that he wasn't sure of. He knew that if they were on the same field, the chase and the fight that went back and forth would be over for good at that point. The score could be settled and that would be that.

He had something to prove now, to show the world that he wasn't what they thought he was, and to reach what he thought that he wanted so badly his entire life—

he needed to face Gloria one more time.

What he knew and decided would likely be the last time.

Bede waited for his chance, and he watched as the finals of the league played out in front of him as Gloria defeated everyone that got in her path. She made her way all the way to end and she would be the one to face Leon. That was when he knew that he had to make his move.

He awoke early that morning before the finals and headed to Wyndon as quickly as he could.

Bede told not a soul what he was doing, this was his business and his business was his to tend to. No one else could do it. When he wanted something, he had to do it. Storming the stadium as the announcer began to speak, and making his way onto the pitch before anyone realized or could stop him, he found himself standing under the heavy lights.

All eyes were on him.

The most important of all: Gloria's eyes were on him.

Against everything that he had ever been, or had ever done, he spilled his guts to her, and he spoke about everything that had happened and had changed. All these confusing feelings that he had been feeling, how low he felt to be defeated and pushed aside, how it felt to be tossed aside by the people he thought cared about him, and how strange it was to be treated so warmly by somebody for a chance.

She listened to his every word, and not once did she interject or try to get him to stop.

He was going to win here or he was going to quit. He was going to prove everything on this, and he could do that, then…

Then…

His heart was hurting. "Do you have any idea what it feels like to have everything that you've ever wanted in the palm of your hands only for it to be ripped away just as quickly as you almost have it? I was supposed to be the person that everyone looked at, who everyone followed, who had everyone chasing to be as strong as I was."

"Then, you come out of the blue and take the lead. Why was I cursed to be born at the same time as you? You're supposed to be looking at my back, not the other way around, Gloria." He took his place across from her on the pitch and waited to see what they would decide.

Gloria's eyes were understanding. She gripped the pokéball in her hand like it was a lifeline. "I never felt like that, you know?" she said, voice soft. "It seemed like I was always chasing after you."

"All you've ever done is beat me and keep moving forward," he said. "I don't see how you would ever feel that way."

The voice on the loudspeaker came from overhead and announced that they had decided to allow Bede's challenge. The crowd roared to life in excitement at this fun, and yet, strange, turn of events. This had never ever happened before in the history of the games so to see something like this was a once in a lifetime kind of event.

Gloria's voice almost doesn't register as they start walking to their side of the field to begin to match. "That's the thing, I never wanted to get ahead of you, Bede. I wanted us to be able to walk together."

For some reason, hearing her speak those words ignited such a fire in him that couldn't be quelled. "My will hasn't been broken yet, Gloria. We've faced too much to quit now. We've got no choice but to win this battle."

"All or nothing," she agreed. "I want this to be the best battle we've ever had if it might be the last."

The fight was long, and it was one of those battles that you had to physically be there to withhold. The emotions in the stadium were electric, and every move and attack was pointed with such intensity that everyone was captivated by the two young rivals.

They gave it everything that they had.

Bede fought tooth and nail until the end, refusing to give up against this challenge as he had with others. Gloria pushed her team to limit and as hard as she got pushed against the wall, she somehow managed to make a comeback from the end and defeat him.

Bede was strangely resolute when it was over, and although his instinct was to stomp his foot against the ground and find some excuse, he could find none this time. "Well… that's it, then. I lost. At the very least, I proved how strong Fairy-Types can be."

Much to his shock, when he turned to take his leave, the crowd around them roared with encouragement and faith that he had not expected. People that wanted him to continue fighting to be a trainer, that wanted him to start over today and they would accept him. His eyes felt wet, but he shed no tear, he dared not to break down in front of them.

Not in front of Gloria.

Footsteps against the ground were loud in his ears suddenly, and the weight of arms around him was tight, strange, and oddly warm. "If anyone ever deserved the chance to start over again, it's you, Bede. They're right. You can start over today, and become the trainer you always were inside."

How dare she…

How dare she be nice to him after he treated her so cruelly!

His throat was wracked with the sob that he had been trying so hard to hide from the world, "This isn't what I planned! If I was able to defeat you then everything would be fine. My pride would be intact. Even if I lost today, I was going to use that as an excuse to be rid of Ms. Opal! But now… now it seems I've got no choice."

"But…" Gloria was quiet as he hesitated.

Bede shook his head, those feelings subsiding as he allowed himself to accept this outcome he had never expected. "With everyone cheering me on like this I have no choice but to continue my training as the Fairy-type Gym Leader!"

"Bede!" Gloria gasped and looked up at him with those brown eyes of hers. She immediately went back to her normal response to him, the annoyed remark that she normally would have said if they were battling. "You nearly gave me a heart attack! Don't play tricks like that!"

A real, genuine laugh escaped from his lips. It was broken and it was a little awkward but it was the first time in years that he had felt the kind of emotion that came along with that. "Though, with my talents, I will defeat Ms. Opal and come back to face you here as soon as possible."

"Oh? Does that mean what I think it means? Have I finally caught up with you?"

"You wish, Gloria. You'll never catch me."

And so, their little game would begin once again.


End file.
